Home Renovation Update - Bathroom

We started a terrace level (aka basement) home renovation project in early June with a planned for completion in 45-60 days.  Here we are 90 days later and it is almost ready to be occupied.  There is, of course, a "punch list" that may take some additional days/trips.  We did hire a general contractor who had done two earlier good sized renovations/additions for us, so this is definitely not a Do-It-Yourself project.

I plan to show the entire basement in a future posting and talk about what we did and how it was done but this discussion is about the bathroom.  I will describe some decisions we made and where we were able to save some money - this may be useful to others contemplating similar remodeling jobs.

The bathroom was part of a 1988 "finished" basement area completed when the house was originally built with dropped ceilings and builder grade tiles, cabinetry and fixtures.  The room does have a large shower which has come handy over the years when we have a large crowd.

The various decision points are as follows:

Cabinetry - NEW or REFURBISHED?

Since the original cabinetry was solid wood and a good size and shape, we decided to leave it and paint it the same color as the doors and custom cabinetry that we were incorporating in the other areas of the basement.  The color I had selected was  a deep charcoal grey!  We did add a granite counter top and new sink and bathroom fixtures.

Walls - PAINT or WALLPAPER?

Initially, I couldn't wait to pull down the old wallpaper and just replace it with a clean coat of paint.  I had wanted this wallpaper gone for so long.  I wrote about my about-face on this blog Wallpaper Selection and again on this one when my originally selected wallpaper was no longer available More Wallpaper Shopping.  I did end up with a paper that I loved.  at a good price (although it still would have been a lot cheaper to paint).

Flooring and Tile Work - ALL or FLOOR ONLY

We found that you can spend a fortune on tile and that is before someone is paid to install it.  The shower area in this room is very large and covered with small 6" white square (cheap) tiles including the floor.  The tiles were in good shape showing very little wear which is largely because less than a dozen showers have been taken in this room in the 12 years we've lived here.  The cost for replacing the tile in the shower would have been very high so we decided to just do the bathroom floor and the "step-up" to the shower which is visible on the outside.  We did decide to install a nice no-edge new shower door which gave it an up-to-date appearance.

 Those were the major decision points which had a financial component to them.

Here are some of the ways we saved money - other than those identified above:

1)  Bought my own mirror for over vanity.  I spent $30 at a garage sale for this mirror and had it painted at the same time as the cabinet in same color.

2)  Bought wallpaper from a shop that has an in-stock selection (see my linked blogs on this subject).  I was facing over $100 a double-roll before finding the in-stock option.  My wallpaper cost $33.00 per double roll which represents quite a big saving for five double-rolls.

3)  Bought bathroom fixtures on-line.  We found a huge selection and savings of 25-35% at various on-line sources.  The fixtures arrived in a few days and are beautiful.

4)  Bought floor tile at tile and flooring warehouse in town.  They had a lot of low-cost selections and we had no difficulties choosing one we liked.

Installation of Floor

We are very happy with our new bathroom and can't wait to add other accessories to finish the space.

Overall Look - Love the coordination of wallpaper and flooring .

Shower is to right showing new shower door.

My $30 garage sale mirror 

Granite counter top and fixtures.

Well, I hope that sharing our story is helpful to those contemplating similar projects.  What do you think?

Wallpapers - Again - More Shopping for Papers

Display at Wallpaper Your World

 
Last month, I gleefully discussed a quick and easy trip to my Sherwin-Williams Paint store's wallpaper (book) section to review and select a wallpaper for our lower level bathroom - see see prior blog.  I was  surprised by my sudden interest in wallpapers (after many years thinking they were passe) and loved the patterns I saw in the books.  I ordered a paper and was told it was no longer being manufactured but  that my need of 3 double-rolls could be accommodated - my total cost was a little over $300 for the three double-rolls.

A few days later, I got a call saying that this paper was not available and I would have to select another pattern.  That started me on a MUCH longer journey trying to find something I liked as well as the initial paper and led to success TODAY!

Before lauding the shop (and price-point), I found in Snellville (suburb of Atlanta), I did all of the following - some more than once.  During this period (about two weeks), I decided at least twice to just paint the room but couldn't quite get the desire for wallpaper out of my head.

a)  returning (twice) to Sherwin-Williams to look for wallpaper options, bring home books - not finding anything I liked as well as the original selection.

Display at Wallpaper Your World

b)  visiting a shop in Brookhaven called Brookhaven Home that had lots of books and a very knowledgeable owner.  I was determined not to exceed the $100 per double-roll which I thought was about as much as I wanted to spend on paper and she was able to help me find some choices in this "middle range" - evidently you can go WAY higher than this.  She was having a 20% off sale (off of the listed retail price), so that was helpful.

Display at Wallpaper Your World

c)  visiting a shop in Buckhead called Wallpaper Plus link to website and dealt with owner/designer Sherrie who had about 150 in-stock papers.  They were well selected and I recognized a number of patterns from the books I had been perusing.  Her price was $66.00 per double-roll - a price-point that seemed awfully good to me.  We found several that looked promising and one that had all the right colors although it was a stripe - I hadn't been looking for and wanting a stripe.  It was so perfect, however, that I bought three double-rolls and took them home feeling very successful and frugal!  Unfortunately, when I got it home and reviewed it with my husband in the actual space, it was clear that the room would be too dark.  So, I returned it but did buy some custom blinds from Sherrie.

Display at Wallpaper Your World - Jack H. Poles Design Board

Display at Wallpaper Your World

d)  visiting a shop in Snellville called Wallpaper Your World link to website.  The shop is owned by designer Jack H. Poles III and he personally selects the papers which were wonderful - about 200 choices all together.  He also provides a much wider range of decorating services and I highly recommend him just based on what I saw in the shop.  The price - get ready for this - is $33.00 per double-roll - I had to ask two or three times!  I brought three home and selected one.

Today, with my daughter and sweet Eliza in tow, I picked up the rolls and will be handing them off to my general contractor to do the work - I am cheap enough but NOT that handy to do this myself.

Sample of Selections at Wallpaper Your World 

Display at Wallpaper Your World

MY selection

It is hard to project this into my space but I will definitely have to be a "before" and "after"!

Wallpaper Selection - Not What I Expected to be Doing

I am continuing the basement renovation saga with this blog.  It is going fast (could be mostly completed in another three weeks) so we have to start making decisions quickly.  One decision I did not anticipate making was a selection of wallpaper for the bathroom.

Basement Bathroom 

When we bought this house in 2000, wallpaper was very popular and the Atlanta area had a number of large stores mostly devoted to making in-store selections.  My husband wallpapered all five and a half bathrooms in the house as well as most of the kitchen.  I loved this look for about five years and started noticing the decline of wallpaper in decorating magazines and home shows.  I also noticed that the stored in the area were closing and today, I do not believe there is a single store still available devoted to wallpaper selections.  So, I looked forward to the day that I could rip out that (now) old wallpaper and paint the walls (never did care for the heavy faux finishes).  We redid our son's bathroom some time ago and eliminated the paper in that room but all the others remain intact.

The basement renovation was an opportunity to remove the wallpaper to give the walls a clean paint surface.  I was planning to paint it the same color as the surrounding area - warm taupe-gold.  And then, something happened!  I started noticing some of the GREAT wallpapers being used in show houses and decorating magazines.  It seemed like a whole, clean new look and much more interesting than plain paint.

I visited our local Sherwin-Williams store's wallpaper corner section and took note of some of the interesting papers that are available.  I waited until we selected the counter top (granite) and flooring (marble-looking white with hints of charcoal and pale gold) and cabinet color (charcoal) before returning to the store to look for options to present to my husband.

Yesterday, I brought home four books with about 18-20 choices - ranging from mostly taupe-gold patterns to bolder patterns with some charcoal black.  I did not want a hard black so many of the otherwise wonderful black and white images didn't work.

Some of the predominantly taupe/gold options - I liked them all! 

I liked this pale gold with grey highlights a log (stick shows color paint being used in adjacent space).

Final choice - swirls of charcoal with some taupe-gold accents.  The granite is not solid black, it has some greys and whites as accents.   

We are getting measurements to place the order as we speak.  So, the only things left to select in the bathroom are the light fixtures and new glass shower stall.  I call that progress!